157 Comments

God better hope Price turns out how everyone says he will, because this could end up being a disaster of a trade on the scale of the Roy deal. I really did not like what I saw from Price for the past year and a half, his game looked like it was full of holes and he couldn’t win for the life of him. He is still young and seems to have changed his attitude, but the pressure will be huge on him next season. If he falters like he did this year, things could get ugly for him and PG. Maybe Desjardins will start the whole debate all over again.

And I think it doesn’t belong here anymore than basketball or baseball would. It’s HABS insideout. I don’t like sifting through soccer stories to see what people are saying and thinking about the Habs. You might not agree but I’m sure you can see that point.

Yes but at the same time, look how quickly Kristo and Leblanc rose on our HF charts because in terms of offensive talent, they didn’t have much direct competition. Calgary doesn’t have a very deep farm, they’ve moved a lot of picks for other assets.

I can’t believe how many bloody ignorant, unsophisticated rednecks there are on this site. Enough already with bashing soccer. Sure, if you’ve never played, or taken the time to educate yourself about the sport, then it would seem boring, but frankly, that’s your loss and your own damn fault. Don’t start bashing the most beautiful game in the world just because you don’t understand it. And all the whining about about it being “too slow” and an “organized jog”, that’s exactly what makes it “The Beautiful Game”, it’s a methodical pace, not all out speed and bashing like NASCAR and hockey, that, and the fact that it unites the entire world, it’s something that we can all participate in, not like bourgeois hockey where you need to be a gosh darn millionaire just to afford the suit of armor they call equipment. I mean, come on, really? Have you even tried soccer? Soccer players are the best conditioned athletes on the planet! They play for 90 minutes, not 30 seconds like hockey players, and they do it WITHOUT padding! And you’d cover your nuts from an inflated ball as well because it hurts like bloody hell when you get hit. Especially when it’s kicked at you at speeds that exceed even Chara’s slap shot. Soccer players are talented warriors, not like the padded up goons of Philly and Boston hockey.

I will however, admit that soccer does have one flaw, and that is how out of control the diving is, as a former player, I have to admit that nothing would infuriate me more than when a teammate or opponent would mysteriously wind up on the ground with no one around him. Aside from that, the game is beautiful, and represents what’s good and right in the world. And I have to commend some of the posters on here for trying to take and interest in the game, and trying to support it.

Damn Hillbillies though, tryin to ruin it for the rest of us… It’s a shame.

You may be right, but I hope not. With 32 teams in the league, there are no rivals, just 31 opponents. A trade means somebody else gets him. We should worry more about the return and keep Price until we get a Carter-type player AND a first round pick, minimum.

I can find guys with better junior stats who never amounted to anything in the NHL, add in the stacked nature of the Windsor Spitfires and those totals can also be considered a little artifically high. Looks bad, but I don’t think we gave them their No. 1 centre with that pick.

But the Tanguay situation was handled extreamly well by Gainey. He paid market value for a 40 goal scorer coming to a team with Cup aspirations. You think CGY did up the asking price when they saw we had a chance at increasing our already league-best offense and PP? Of course they did, and at that time the trade was good for both sides…

The Habs had been eliminated by Philly, largely because the offense wen’t dry along with PP struggles. Tanguay was targetted to help this from happening again, and a 40 goal scorer is a good solution. Gainey chose not to re-sign him, and that again was a wise move. Nobody touched him last summer, until Tampa threw him a bag of peanuts at 1.5 mill. How did he respond playing with Stamkos, ST-Louis, and Lecavalier? Pretty badly, and that’s why we didn’t want him back….

The Tanguay situation IMO was properly adressed, both in acquiring him and letting him go. You also have to consider at the time we gave up those 1st and 2nd round picks, we looked like a very strong young team that could have skipped a year of high draft picks. We had AK who looked like he could pop 30 per year, SK played very well, Webber and Carle still progressing, Price and Halak playing well, Pleks popping 69 pts at 25 years old, and Latendresse scoring 16 goals at 20 years old.

Those 1st and 2nd round picks, which weren’t high ones (I think 25th or something), were not as important and valuable for us as they would be for a struggling team. We were the top team in the East, which made it easier to part ways with them.

There hasn’t been much Quebecois talent available in the draft for the last 10 years though is also the issue, if one skater is 20 spots ahead of the other, birthplace or not it is your duty to draft the better skater, drafting/signing Quebecois in the hopes that the CH will make them play better got played out a long time ago becuase it didn’t work. Only major omission in the last 10 years was Claude Giroux in the 1st round. The 2nd round, in 2003 Corey Urquhart over Bergeron was a mistake naturally, Lats, either laziness or bad development, or both was hardly a shining moment for 2005 and Mathieu Carle seems too fragile to make the NHL from 2006 pick in the 2nd and after that, I don’t see any real mistakes.

Quebec hockey is weak right now and so the Canadiens don’t have much to choose from, especially with 29 other teams drafting.

You can’t eliminate Philly from your trading partners by thinking the way you do…

The chances of facing them again in the playoffs are very slim. And if you don’t face them, why not trade with them?

We faced Carolina, Tampa Bay, Pittsburgh and Washington in recent years. Would you not trade with them too, or you would because we’ve beaten some of them and lost to others? You never know who you’ll face for the next 5 years and so on. If we nixed good potential trades with Tampa and the Canes 3 or 4 years back because we had just played them, well that’s bad management because we haven’t faced them since. Nobody can tell the future.

Even if we trade one of our goalers to Philly, there’s no guarantee we face them in the playoffs. The highest possibility we have of facing them is in the Conference Finals again, because your rankings don’t matter then. Are you saying you can’t trade with them because we might finish 7th and them 2nd next year? That’s just crazy, unless you know the future. They can finish anywhere an get eliminated by weaker opponents. Same goes for us. You can’t block trades with them for those reasons.

If that’s the case, don’t trade with Western Conference teams either, cuz you can face them in the Finals every year…

That’s why this site is so amazing. Before I ever started posting I would learn (and I still do) a **** load from all the intelligent minds here. I am even including those who don’t come across as intelligent to others.

You know this is a very good point. There are alot of factors that function in to these trades. And usually most people don’t know what they are. Easy to look back and pick and choose this or that. But being in the situation is not always as it looks… Tough decisions await and the GM will be bashed either way… You can NEVER win here.